Leaving the cozy air conditioning of Carpark headquarters took a lot of encouragement from Todd. "You guys should probably leave... you are going to be late..." I reminded myself that I should be the one prying everyone from the comfortable sofa (I'm pretty sure that is a tour manager's duty) and we eventually gathered our laundry and belongings and loaded up the car top carrier.
Finally, we hit the road to Charlottesville, VA (and were, in fact, a little bit late). The venue was enormous, but one problem with playing college towns in the summer is that those large venues look even larger. Sold out or not, all the bands played really well.
After the show, we met up with Andy's cousins at "the corner" (or something similar - I'm pretty sure every college town has a 5-points, a corner, or some other popular meet up). Instead of going to the crowded bar, we caught last call at the karaoke bar next door and then headed back to Andy's cousin's sorority house where we were going to be staying.
These are the things that we imagined happening in the sorority house: pillow fights, tons of gossip, and maybe putting on a romantic comedy and eating a few quarts of Ben and Jerry's. None of these happened (though our wonderful host, Jean, did make Patrick and I Easy Mac and Ramen in the wee hours of the morning).
Now is when you ask: So Jordan, what did happen?
Let me tell you...
First off, Parker showed up covered in dirt and fruit punch and pushed his way through the door. And Jill was like, "get out of here" and Parker was like "hell no" and Jill was like "I'll punch you in the face," and Parker was like "do it then!" so Jill punched him in the face. Then of course his shirt came off and Parker was all like, "I dare you to do it again!"
During this ruckus, Patrick and I had gone out to the car to get the beer that was left over from the show. In that short walk, I was called a faggot twice by frat guys (once by a guy who was hitting beer cans with a golf club in his yard, the other by a guy who was upset that we didn't want to come party at his house). When we came back, we heard the Jill versus Parker story close to one hundred times.
Everything became calm after that. After a bit of conversation, we retired to an unoccupied room. A lot of the sorority sisters had returned to the places they are from after they had finished their finals, so we had plenty of places to sleep.
Morning came, we re-loaded the Ford Focus, and began our trek to Carborro...
